John Aldous knew that words would avail nothing in these last few minutes between him and Quade.  The latter had already hunched himself forward, the red knife in his hand poised at his waistline.  He was terrible.  His huge bulk, his red face and bull neck, his eyes popping from behind their fleshy lids, and the dripping blade in the shapeless hulk of his hand gave him the appearance as he stood there of some monstrous gargoyle instead of a thing of flesh and blood.  And Aldous was terrible to look at, but in a way that wrung a moaning cry from Joanne.  His face was livid from the beat of the rocks; it was crusted with blood; his eyes were partly closed, and what remained of his shirt was drenched with blood that still ran from the deep cuts in his arms and shoulders.  But it was he who advanced, and Quade who stood and waited.

Aldous knew little or nothing of knife-fighting; and he realized, also, that there was a strange weakness in his arms and body caused by his battle with the maelstroms in the chasm.  But he had wrestled a great deal with the Indians of the north, who fought as their half-wolf sledgedogs fought, and he employed their methods now.  Slowly and deliberately he began to circle around Quade, so that Quade became the pivot of that circle, and as he circled he drew nearer and nearer to his enemy, but never in a frontal advance.  He edged inward, with his knife-arm on the outside.  His deadly deliberateness and the steady glare of his eyes discomfited Quade, who suddenly took a step backward.

It was always when the Indian made this step that his opponent darted in; and Aldous, with this in mind, sprang to the attack.  Their knives clashed in midair.  As they met, hilt to hilt, Aldous threw his whole weight against Quade, darted sidewise, and with a terrific lunge brought the blade of his knife down between Quade’s shoulders.  A straight blade would have gone from back to chest through muscle and sinew, but the knife which Aldous held scarcely pierced the other’s clothes.

Not until then did he fully realize the tremendous odds against him.  The curved blade of his skinning-knife would not penetrate!  His one hope was to cut with it.  He flung out his arm before Quade had fully recovered, and blind luck carried the keen edge of the knife across his enemy’s pouchy cheek.  The blood came in a spurt, and with a terrible cry Quade leaped back toward the pile of saddles and panniers.  Before Aldous could follow his advantage the other had dropped his knife and had snatched up a four-foot length of a tepee pole.  For a moment he hesitated while the blood ran in a hot flood down his thick neck.  Then with a bellow of rage he rushed upon Aldous.